Prosecution Insights
Prosecution Insights
Technology area: Biotechnology & Pharmaceuticals
4 pending office actions • 4 art units • 4 examiners • 0 of 4 (0%) have an AI response strategy ready • 6 patents granted in the last 365 days
Ac Immune SA manages a patent portfolio in the Biotechnology & Pharmaceuticals technology area. There are currently 4 pending office actions. These 4 pending office actions are distributed across 4 distinct examiners and 4 distinct art units, showing a diverse range of examination environments for the company's active applications. This spread indicates that the company's biotechnological research is being evaluated by multiple specialized units, each with its own set of examination standards and technical expertise.
The busiest examiner is FONTAINHAS, AURORA M, who is responsible for 1 busiest examiner pending office action. Given that there are 4 pending office actions in total, the workload is spread across the 4 distinct examiners, with each handling a single action. This suggests that no single examiner dominates the company's current prosecution landscape. For practitioners, this means that the strategy for each application must be tailored to the specific examiner and art unit involved, as there is no central examiner whose patterns would apply to all 4 pending office actions.
Based on the USPTO statutory response window for each pending office action. 1 of the docket's apps have a known mailing date; the rest are excluded from the tile counts.
Difficulty is derived from the rejection statutes on the most recent pending office action. §101-driven and multi-statute cases are graded Hard; §112-only and obviousness-type double-patenting cases are graded Easy; everything else is Medium. "Unknown" means we have not yet parsed a statute for that office action.
| Bucket | Cases |
|---|---|
| §102 only | 1 (25%) |
| §112 only | 1 (25%) |
| Double-patenting only | 1 (25%) |
| Multi-statute (no §101) | 1 (25%) |
How the docket's pending cases split across USPTO tech-center bands.
Manual office-action response work runs about 10 hours per case. The time-saved bands below show what IP Author's prosecution pipeline typically delivers — a conservative 20% on the low end, 35% in the middle, 50% on the high end.
| Examiner | Apps on this docket | Allow rate | Interview lift |
|---|---|---|---|
| FONTAINHAS, AURORA M | 1 | 37.9% | +49.2% |
| FETTEROLF, BRANDON J | 1 | 52.0% | +17.4% |
| LEE, CHIHYI NMN | 1 | 33.7% | +60.8% |
| MCCORMICK, CATHERINE LYNN | 1 | 50.0% | +42.5% |
Multi-statute / §101-driven matters, or cases in front of an examiner with an allow rate under 30%. The top 1 ordered by deadline are shown.
| App # | Title | Examiner | Due in |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18222115 | NOVEL COMPOUNDS | LEE, CHIHYI NMN | — |
Cases in front of an examiner whose interview lift is 10 percentage points or more — i.e. interviewed cases historically resolve more favorably than non-interviewed ones. The top 4 ordered by deadline are shown.
| App # | Title | Examiner | Due in |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18039840 | Antibody Delivery | MCCORMICK, CATHERINE LYNN | 26d |
| 18395150 | Vaccine Therapy | FONTAINHAS, AURORA M | — |
| 18227103 | NOVEL COMPOUNDS | FETTEROLF, BRANDON J | — |
| 18222115 | NOVEL COMPOUNDS | LEE, CHIHYI NMN | — |
| Art Unit | Apps |
|---|---|
| 1649 | 1 |
| 1626 | 1 |
| 1628 | 1 |
| 1638 | 1 |
| App # | Title | Examiner | Art Unit | Statutes | Status | Due in | AI | Filed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18395150 | Vaccine Therapy | FONTAINHAS, AURORA M | 1649 | DP | Non-Final OA | — | Pending | Dec 22, 2023 |
| 18227103 | NOVEL COMPOUNDS | FETTEROLF, BRANDON J | 1626 | §112 | Non-Final OA | — | Pending | Jul 27, 2023 |
| 18222115 | NOVEL COMPOUNDS | LEE, CHIHYI NMN | 1628 | §102§103§112 | Final Rejection | — | Pending | Jul 14, 2023 |
| 18039840 | Antibody Delivery | MCCORMICK, CATHERINE LYNN | 1638 | §102 | Final Rejection | 26d | Pending | Jun 01, 2023 |
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